Window Maker: Your NeXT Window Manager

Window Maker is an X11 window manager originally designed to provide integration support for the GNUstep Desktop Environment. In every way possible, it reproduces the elegant look and feel of the NEXTSTEP user interface. It is fast, feature rich, easy to configure, and easy to use. It is also free software, with contributions being made by programmers from around the world.

Window Maker includes compatibility options which allow it to work with other popular desktop environments, namely GNOME and KDE, and comes with a powerful GUI configuration editor, called WPrefs, which removes the need to edit text-based configuration files by hand.

The obligatory screenshot (click the image for a larger view):

My Window Maker desktop with WPrefs, the info panel and various menus displayed.The applets in the dock (upper right) are courtesy of DockApps.org. The small set of icons in the lower right corner are the notification area icons managed by the Trayer app.

Window Maker Features

We have already mentioned that Window Maker is a window manager. There are other window managers out there, such as the infamous FVWM, Enlightenment, AfterStep, and the list goes on. All window managers perform the same basic tasks, which are to create, place, keep track of, and draw borders around the windows on the screen. Beyond this, they can become quite different in their various abilities.

Window Maker firmly adheres to the behavior and functionality of the NEXTSTEP user interface. The developers have put forth a great deal of effort in capturing the essense and beauty of the original design, and have incorporated some new ideas of their own. This has always followed the philosophy of keeping to those features which fit well into the overall design, while limiting the amount of “feature creep” that tends to bloat other window managers. A summary of the main Window Maker features are presented below.

Core

almost complete ICCCM compliance

national language I18N support (over 11 locales)

built-in icon dithering with support for 4bpp and 8bpp displays

popup menus that support keyboard traversal, which can be “pinned” to the root window

support for GNUstep, GNOME, and KDE window hints to better integrate with those desktop environments

support for Motif[tm] and OPEN LOOK[tm] window hints to better interface with applications based on those toolkits

ability to change all preferences and menus on-the-fly without having to restart the window manager

support for multiple workspaces (aka “virtual desktops”)

Extras

built-in themes support

over 13 types of window decorations, including custom defined

support for XPM, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, GIF and PPM icons (no conversions with external programs) with an alpha-channel

support for setting the root window background (via the wmsetbg utility)

optional superfluous animations, such as window shading, customizable icon miniaturization effects, slide/scrolling menus, and much more

Despite all of these features, Window Maker is not resource intensive and remains stable across many UNIX variants. It is extremely flexible, and many options can be included or excluded at compile time. This means that you can easily tailor Window Maker to meet your needs; whether you’re a minimalist wanting to save resources, or an extremist that likes to theme everything in sight.

Installing Window Maker

Window Maker is available in the Ubuntu software repository and is likely available in the software repositories of other GNU/Linux distributions. To install Window Maker in Ubuntu, simply run the following command:

Window Maker Links

After having used GNOME and KDE, I found that Window Maker was extremely fast, much more responsive and I haven’t seen a single bug in my years of using this wonderful window manager. I recommend Window Maker to new Linux users and veterans alike.

I realize that this article is rather short, but that’s what happens when you have a window manager that “just works” and a wonderful community of people who post guided tours, themes and other important content.

Fortunately, these days many of us still use the command line environment instead.

Unfortunately, these days many of us need a desktop environment instead of just plain window manager.

– What happens if you plug in an usb stick? Or usb hard drive?

– Can you mount a windows partition without command line (or entry in /etc/fstab)?

– How easy it is to set up your wlan? Do you have to fire up wicd?

I don’t believe that automounting, setting wireless connection with fancy but constantly segfaulting GUI tool that only works in Linux, or the ability to not edit fstab, are the selling points of bigger desktop environments. The applications are.

Actually, the renaissance of “just” window managers continues to flourish.

EDIT: By the way, nice article. Reminds me of the good old days of OSNews.

The WM doesn’t make much difference to any of these things. Use Fluxbox, for instance, and when you fire up the file manager, whichever you want, you’ll see the usb stick automount.

The main difference is how much clutter there is around the place. Fluxbox seems about right, you do have the bottom task bar, but the rest is pretty clean. You have to hand edit the menu file if you want to change the levels where things appear, but the rest is point and click.

Mounting windows partitions. Well, whatever you use, you mostly have to create a link to them. But you do that in the same file manager.

Do it with fluxbox, you will still have to spend a couple hours with your user, but you will have to do that just as much with gnome or kde. Try it out sometime, and you might be surprised how the user is actually pleased to get rid of all the clutter and just have simple apps, right click to select them, and get on with the work.

The *advantage* of using a window manager, as opposed to a desktop environment is agnosticism.

If you like the wifi tool of KDE – use it.

If you like raw ‘iwconfig’ – use it.

If you like to create wrappers for your own commansds – you may easily do that as well.

—–

It comes down to this:

If you want to run a tool, you may. DND works. You may run Kicker, BB, or GNOME-panel in conjunction with Window Maker.

Me, I’m fine with Window Maker and yaquake. If I need mouse-driven file management, I’m free to use Konqueror, Nautilus, or a Directory Opus or Midnight Commander clone, or ‘mv’, ‘cp’, and ‘rm’ directly from the ‘Run…’ menu option.

Can it get any better? Yes it can, because if I want multiple desktops, all I need to do is visit wmprefs, and scroll on the (always uncluttered) desktop.

Mounting: we have this cool thing, at least in Linux, called automount. You get things set up as a service, not dependent on a DE or anything. All done.

WLAN can be done many ways, but again, is not a DE issue, unless you make it one. Wicd, FI, doesn’t even need a GUI, but if you have one, just add a tray, and you’re done. Of course you have to fire up Wicd. That’s what startup apps are for, and even all the WMs have that feature.

And “modern linux” users are using something someone else cobbled together Rube Goldberg-style. You really don’t know the first thing about Linux and the software that runs on it, do you? Or did you think that Gnome and KDE just magically appeared whole and complete without a lot of background hacking?

And “modern linux” users are using something someone else cobbled together Rube Goldberg-style. You really don’t know the first thing about Linux and the software that runs on it, do you?

Hey, I was cobbling together ugly automount configs in the mid to late 1990s. I recognized them as being ugly at the time. But it was the best we had back then. Been there. Done that. And there are much better solutions now, for desktop users. Which are more refined than any Rube Goldberg contraption. Or if they aren’t, they at least hide the fact much better.

So tell me about your auto.master and auto.misc files. I’m curious how you have things set up on your system.

No insult intended, however you came off as completely ignorant, or at least very new, to Linux/Unix with your “modern linux users” comment, as if only Ubuntu users count for something. I found it a bit rude and replied in kind.

As for my own automounting, Pat Volkerding has been including HAL and its Rube Goldberg magic in Slackware for a while now. ;-D All I have to do is make sure my account is a member of the proper groups and I’m set. I realize this is one more step than distros like Ubuntu and Fedora, but I’m comfortable with it.

No insult intended, however you came off as completely ignorant, or at least very new, to Linux/Unix with your “modern linux users” comment, as if only Ubuntu users count for something.

I’m a middle-aged Unix guy sick to death of watching new users get the RTFM shaft by the old guard elite and delighted to see some justice and end user empowerment showing up in our Unix world after all these many years.

Mucking with automount is pretty much a waste of time for desktop users today. Vivainio was pointing out the advantages of DE’s over window managers in this day and age. And he’s right.

You’re right, DEs will always have many advantages over WMs and the command line. Personally I love what I’ve seen of the new Ubuntu’s interface; very Mac-like, which to me is a good thing from a usability standpoint. However, I choose to use Slackware because I like to be closer to the guts of my system. I’ve been doing that for years and I’m happy there. That said, I have great respect for Gnome and it’s my DE of choice when I’m in anything other than Slackware. I also find great pleasure working on a Mac, as OS X is in my opinion the best desktop Unix ever created.

As to our back-and-forth, I feel my point still stands: That you were being overly obnoxious, rightful indignation notwithstanding. I’ve been guilty of it myself many times and my intent was not to cast stones, so to speak. But, just as you tire of the “RTFM” attitude, I too tire of the implications that only the most bleeding edge full GUI mouse-everything interface is the best — or only — way forward. The right tool for the right job is not just an old cliche, it’s tried and tested and some of us like our old worn-down tools. They get the job done the right way for us.

Oh, and I’m not yet middle aged myself, though my daughter pointed out my first grey hair yesterday. I’ve just had a computer of some sort in front of me for the past 27 years or so, and it takes a lot to get me out of an old system if it still works. Hell, I still use DOS and BeOS for a few things.

I’m not arguing DE vs command line. In the context to which Vivainio referring, automount sucks indescribably badly, and would be a waste of time to try to configure into working as well as what Gnome and KDE provide. And in the time that one might spend trying to do that (impossible) task, millions of DE users would be getting real work done without ever so much as considering what it even means to “mount a volume”.

The DE may offer a desktop icon (hidden by application windows), a popup window (annoying), and/or a big balloon tooltip about this miraculous event (annoying). I don’t see any of those as useful features, wrt to removable media.

Why do you think one has to monkey around with automount if he uses (for instance) fluxbox or WM? Of course you don’t. Where does this idea come from? Just try it. Load flux, start up the file manager of your choice, Thunar is quite nice, then plug in a usb stick. See, it shows up in the left panel.

I think the “problem” (or incoherence, let’s put it that way) is to run a window manager to brag about how your system is fast and start Dolphin (or Konqueror or Nautilus or Thunar) so that it brings all the services they need to the memory. In the end, you got using the same things that made you change to a window manager.

This is what I see from where I stand. I’m a KDE user myself, and don’t have anything against the current strucutre of things (DBus, Hal, PolicyKit, etc…).

Slackware has it all set up nicely right out of the box, these days; and, even on Arch Linux (my preferred distro), it takes only a minute or so, with straight-forward procedures (install, prevent possible conflicts, add startup daemon), and is only done once.

Rube Goldberg crap is usually going on behind the scenes. Until it doesn’t work, I can leave it there (but, using Arch, it’s not so bad when I have to deal with it). Lately, even HAL/PolicyKit+NTFS has been behaving.

As a modern Linux user, I don’t hack or cobble together much of anything for such basic features. I install widely-available software that is made for the job, and move on. I just happen to not like the clutter of DEs, and the only feature I lose by not using one is quick loading of applications dependent upon it, which I don’t find to be a big deal.

That’s what hal and udev are for, the desktop really does nothing but to put a GUI in top of that… Just google for “writing udev rules” to know how to do that without a single extra megabyte of desktop installed.

‘- Can you mount a windows partition without command line (or entry in /etc/fstab)?’

Yes. ntfs-3g is a FUSE based fs, and FUSE is kind of an acronym for “filesystem in userspace”. And, more importantly, if the Desktop can do it: you can do it… There’s nothing magic about a desktop, or a WM, the desktop is not a piece of your kernel so it can do exactly the same things than any other kind of userspace software. No more, no less. The only difference is the way you do it.

‘- How easy it is to set up your wlan? Do you have to fire up wicd?’

It depends on the application you use for that, only that. The desktop has nothing to do with that.

I admit I am higly biased because I just dislike this model of doing everything in your desktop… Call me old-fashioned, but I am one of these animals that believe that the management of the hardware should be in the hands of the kernel and the core system tools, and not in the hands of a desktop. This is bad for many reasons. First, and very important, it makes the software difficult to port to other architectures, second, it makes the software incredibly complicated, it duplicates functionality that’s already there in lower layers. It’s not really the *nix way to reinvent the wheels once and again and again, when there’s already a tool that does the task, and does it very well.

This also makes standarization very difficult, because each desktop likes to do things in its own particular way. I find it really ridiculous that you need to enter X to bring up your network. Ridiculous, really. Good luck when X breaks and you need internet access to download a fix or an update… Insane. And much more these days that the graphics drivers and HAL seems to be having fun with every human being using Linux hehe.

All you need for that is a driver for your hardware and ifconfig or whatever is used to manage your concrete lan interface. Again, if the GUI can do it, then you can do it as well.

Now, about WMs vs DEs, I really find the native window managers for kde and gnome really limited, compared to what fvwm, xmonad or openbox can do, just to name a few… Kwin still stands to some point, but metacity (gnome) is really the dumbest WM ever, only comparable to windowlab or evilwm. It can move, maximize or minimize windows, little more. The rest of the desktop are just applications, and these applications can be used under any WM. Using fvwm or windowmaker really doesn’t mean you can’t use gnome-panel if you want, or nautilus, or konqueror, or xfce-panel… and so on.

So, using a standalone WM is not only possible, but it’s also the best thing you can do if you really need some advanced window managing features. I will continue to use fvwm just because there’s no way that kde or gnome can do even a 10% of what fvwm does in which regards managing windows. I use lots of gtk, qt and kde apps inside fvwm, it doesn’t limit my scope, in fact, it broadens it.

I’m late to the party on this one. As far as wireless goes, let me put in a plug for Mandriva. In the world where everyone is going to NetworkManager, they have a UI for the configuration files of the more standard command line tools. I’m not sure exactly how it works, but it works, and it will keep you connected even when your not in X.

Sorry, but I’ve been a NeXT user since 1996. I also used to use WM on FreeBSD and linux, and contributed the GTK style back in 97 or 98 I think.

<blockquote>In every way possible, it reproduces the elegant look and feel of the NEXTSTEP user interface. </blockquote>

You’ve obviously never been anywhere near a NeXT box. Nothing against WM. It is an X window manager, and as an X window manager it is good at what it is. It is not even close to the look and feel of a real NeXT desktop for someone that is familiar with the system. Look, I have nothing against WM, or you in particular, but if you are going to make comments about a system you’ve never used and state that it reproduces that system in every way, someone, me in this instance, is going to point out that you have no clue what you’re talking about. Nothing personal.

For starters NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP were operating systems. Extremely well integrated and cohesive systems. The system was so far ahead of everything else at the time in terms of user experience that about all I can do is tell you to somehow get an os disc and play with it in a virtual machine and imagine that it’s 1993 or 1994 or 1995 or 1996, and remember what the other desktops of the time offered.

The reason we former users love this system so much has a great deal to do with the user experience, which thankfully OS X lets us hang on to a sliver of. OS X isn’t very NeXT-like from the desktop, but as a former user I get enough sense of its heritage using it that it is better than if NeXT had just disappeared altogether. Don’t get me wrong, in many ways OS X exceeds NeXT, and I’m a very content OS X user.

WM is a nice little window manager. It’s responsive. It looks reasonably NeXT-ish. But it’s still an X window manager, and all it really does is put NeXT-ish lipstick on that pig.

The NeXT Workspace introduced the three column view file browser, and it included a shelf. Display Postscript offered desktop graphics that looked like a million bucks compared to any other windowing system of the time. Like OS X, every app had its own menu. It also had tear-off and sticky sub menus. NeXT had services, which allowed every app to use relevant functionality from your other installed apps.

Look, I am biased. I LOVED this system, and still do. The only reason that NeXT isn’t as emulated as the Amiga is that there just weren’t that many people who got to use a NeXT Cube or slab. The cube was a $10k micro computer and most people could afford an Amiga. I wish Apple would just go ahead and make the old system public domain so people could legally play with it. Until then, GNUStep is the project that may eventually produce a system that is pretty damn close.

There are some cool NeXT videos on YouTube with Steve Jobs promoting the system and what it can do. Good viewing. Also, Steve Jobs And The NeXT Big Thing is a good read.

So I don’t hate Window Maker, it’s just not the same as the real thing.

But it’s close. It’s as close as it can be without common code heritage. As close as it can be using X, rather than DPS.

It’s missing critical pieces that would bring it closer to mimicking NS/OS – Workspace.app, Services, Inspectors, etc.. These pieces come with GNUstep, and could use the attention of a passionate group of individuals. Remember; WINGs.

Why it is not close to the real thing? Could you explain? I’m not trolling, I’m just curious because I don’t know the real thing

Behavior is way off. The Preferences.app is garbage compared to NeXT Preferences.app. NeXT Services don’t exist. NeXTMail.app stomps all over GNUMail.app. On and on and on. Pasteboard services are weak. Non-Display Postscript, etc.

The shortcuts actions aren’t remotely the same. No system-wide Dictionary/Thesaurus, Developer Tools are weak at best, APIs are a small subset, etc.

because it hasn’t got even half of the power that the objective-C apis provided to NEXT. Without those all you have is a half assed shell incapable of even the most basic of tasks the NEXT OS was caable of. Next was all about the API. Oh and Mac OSX is not an evolution of Next. Evolution normally implies useful additions/changes. From talking with the GNUStep guys. It sounds like Apple REMOVED functionality from the API to lock people into the mac way of doing things. It’s like saying that an apple genetically modified into being an orange is now somehow an apple version 2.0. It’s not It’s now an orange and no longer an apple or evolution of an apple.

If the creators didn’t want it compared to the original they shouldn’t have wholesale borrowed the look and feel of the original. Of course people are going to compare WindowMaker to NeXTStep. The WindowMaker devs go so far as to encourage comparisons when they refer to how WM “reproduces the elegant look and feel of the NEXTSTEP[tm] user interface”. The problem is that WM can’t reproduce the elegant look and feel of NeXTStep when all it can do is dress up window frames, some menus, and an incredibly small subset of GUI apps the user may need or want. The look and feel of the majority of user apps themselves is totally out of its control. What you end up with is a horrible mish-mash of UI styling and functionality. A Linux system running WM and GNOME or KDE apps, by it’s very open nature, can’t come anywhere close to approaching the unified look and usability a NeXT box provided with it’s toolkit and HiG. A full blown KDE or GNOME desktop running KDE or GNOME apps is arguably closer to what NeXT was than what WM tries to provide because either of those can provide consistency.

Bit of a stretch. This makes it seem like it’s a case of going from Windows 2000 to Windows 7, but the differences between NeXSTEP and Mac OS X are far greater. You can’t argue with a straight face that Mac OS X = NeXTSTEP. They are two different systems.

But hey, whatever makes you happy. If you want Mac OS X to be NeXTSTEP so you can say NEXT isn’t dead (as awesome and ahead-of-its-time as it was), then more power to you!

Bit of a stretch. This makes it seem like it’s a case of going from Windows 2000 to Windows 7, but the differences between NeXSTEP and Mac OS X are far greater. You can’t argue with a straight face that Mac OS X = NeXTSTEP. They are two different systems.

I can say with an absolute straight face that OSX is a DIRECT DESCENDENT of NeXTSTEP.

I have an application that I originally wrote on NeXTSTEP 3.2. I upgraded to 3.3, and Project Builder (The NeXTSTEP development IDE), updated it, then I tried OpenStep, and a newer project builder, again, it updated the project.

Then I moved to OSX 10.0, there was an updated Project Builder, and Interface Builder. These imported the project and nibs from OpenStep perfectly. Currently, I use 10.6, and I have updated the same project I started working on in 1995. Much of the code is unchanged at all.

Along the way, I think around the 10.1 or 10.2 timeframe, Apple renamed Project Builder to XCode, but Interface Builder is still Interface Builder, and still behaves similarly to how it did in 1995.

Probably the biggest difference in NeXTSTEP and OSX 10.0 is the change from display postscript to display PDF (nice), and the move of the floating menu, to the menu bar.

I have to say, there is less of a difference between OpenStep 4.2 and OSX 10.0 then there was between Windows 3.11 and Windows 95. I know that I have to change FAR FAR less code in my apps when I went from OpenStep to OSX 10.0 then I did when I ported a Windows 3.1 app to Windows 95.

And yes, Window Maker, while it may be a nice X11 manager, it is nowhere near the original NeXSTEP.

Bit of a stretch. This makes it seem like it’s a case of going from Windows 2000 to Windows 7, but the differences between NeXSTEP and Mac OS X are far greater. You can’t argue with a straight face that Mac OS X = NeXTSTEP. They are two different systems.

At the level of an application user the look and feels appear very different. But if you are a programmer and compare the current Cocoa development frameworks with OpenStep from 1995, then they are incredibly similar. I would say there were more changes in the NeXT apis when they moved from the original NeXT ones to OpenStep 15 years ago (ie Object -> NSObject etc). If an OpenStep programmer had been in suspended animation since 1995, you could wake him up today and get him productive pretty much straight away with writing iPhone apps.

The current Mac OS X apis are more like supersets of the original OpenStep ones, rather than replacements. Interface Builder is very much the same idea as the original, although it has been rewritten once or twice I believe.

If you are a programmer you can see how Mac OS X services are the same as the NeXT ones, you can understand how the pervasive drag and drop in Mac OS X is because of the NeXT underpinnings. An ex-NeXT programmer, like myself, sees Mac OS X in a different way than an ordinary user would with no programming background or understanding of how the original system worked.

Bit of a stretch. This makes it seem like it’s a case of going from Windows 2000 to Windows 7, but the differences between NeXSTEP and Mac OS X are far greater. You can’t argue with a straight face that Mac OS X = NeXTSTEP. They are two different systems.

Thom – no, no it is not. If you had used all of those (I’ve used Open Step, Rhapsody and Mac OS X 10.2 – 10.6) you can *see* the similarities. They are notable and numerous.

Bit of a stretch. This makes it seem like it’s a case of going from Windows 2000 to Windows 7, but the differences between NeXSTEP and Mac OS X are far greater. You can’t argue with a straight face that Mac OS X = NeXTSTEP. They are two different systems.

But hey, whatever makes you happy. If you want Mac OS X to be NeXTSTEP so you can say NEXT isn’t dead (as awesome and ahead-of-its-time as it was), then more power to you!

Been a dev on NS/OS/OSX since 0.9 pre release back in 1990 on cubes. Owned a lot of various machines, sold most of them recently to Black Hole (thank you rob for taking that stuff off my hands). Now, if anyone here cares, the classes in OS X are still named in many cases NSClassNameHere. NS lives on for eternity this way

Wow. I mean, seriously, we’ve had EWMH for years now (1.3 is from 2005). Who the hell still uses ICCCM and DE-specific hints instead of the newer unified standard? And it doesn’t even implement ICCCM completely. Come on.

I’m sure WM still has users, I mean hell, even good old granpa Blackbox probably still has some users left, but would I recommend it to a modern desktop user? Damn no, what would be the point for God’s sake? There are much better choices out there in every way, by features, performance, any way you want it. WM and its ilk are relics of the past, let them die already, peacefuly, surrounded by their loved ones.

Want a decent desktop environment or window manager? Look at the ones that are actively developed, that have come through the years and actually EVOLVED. Gnome, KDE, Enlightenment, XFCE etc. You can love or hate what they are today, but at least they keep moving with the times, they aren’t frozen in the 90’s.

Thank you. I keep trying to go back and install GNUSTEP on my computers and begin developing. After a few hours reading the mailing lists, I get depressed and give up. The same idiots who absolutely REFUSE to bring GNUSTEP out of the 90’s are still there. THIS system SHOULD BE WHERE GNOME AND KDE are. Instead there are a a bunch of purists there who wont take any kind of forward looking suggestions. And forget Etoile. Its a bunch of “Kits”/”Services” thats confusing and disjointed. They whole lot of them make me sad. Real sad. Remember Miguel actually tried to help on gnustep, but left and started gnome.

Thank you. I keep trying to go back and install GNUSTEP on my computers and begin developing. After a few hours reading the mailing lists, I get depressed and give up. The same idiots who absolutely REFUSE to bring GNUSTEP out of the 90’s are still there. THIS system SHOULD BE WHERE GNOME AND KDE are. Instead there are a a bunch of purists there who wont take any kind of forward looking suggestions. And forget Etoile. Its a bunch of “Kits”/”Services” thats confusing and disjointed. They whole lot of them make me sad. Real sad. Remember Miguel actually tried to help on gnustep, but left and started gnome.

Too bad we can’t also have some dinosaurs, cause they were also magnificent. Alas, it’s been a few million years and the world has changed. What place would a dinosaur have in today’s world? There’s more to survival than the cool factor, you know.

NEXTSTEP, BeOS were not viable, so they died off. It had nothing to do with their technical merits, but they’re dead all the same. And as long as the rights holders don’t release the source (and I don’t see why they would), all we have is reverse-engineered replicas.

I’d imagine you could feed a lot of people with meat off the average dinosaur… How do you feed them though? That’s the question! Do we get enough meat off a single dinosaur to justify the cost of feeding it as compared to say a cow (or herd of cows in how much meat we get back for the dinosaur?)

Jason Bourne mentioned a theme in his post, called “Leeter than you” but unfortunately all the Windowmanager sites seem to be suffering from web-rot. Most of them link to wm.themes.org including Windowmanager’s own site which resolves to freshmeat.org and its frontpage, regardless of the actual link. Unless someone saved all those old themes somewhere, Windowmanager is pretty much dead in the water since you either have to have saved one of those themes from way back when or like the defaults included with your distro’s selection. There is no customizing possible otherwise. (If I’m wrong please show me the links so I can check it out! Thanks.)

–bornagainpenguin

PS: Its sad to me that there are so many window managers, and desktop environments that have stagnated over the years. Especially since (as has already been pointed out) KDE is still only half baked and Gnome looks to be repeating that experiment soon… I’m a big fan of Gnome, especially as configured by Canonical but the last two or three releases have been really really underdone and I fear for the future. It’d be nice if there were more (active) desktops to move to in case of the worst…

Unless someone saved all those old themes somewhere, Windowmanager is pretty much dead in the water since you either have to have saved one of those themes from way back when or like the defaults included with your distro’s selection. There is no customizing possible otherwise. (If I’m wrong please show me the links so I can check it out! Thanks.)

I’ve never used any themes for Window Maker because I’ve never seen one I liked. You can tweak fonts and colors from WPrefs.app, and that has been enough for me.

The two screenshots below are from my system five and three years ago. They both show a customized backgroud color for the dock, not so dark titlebars, and probably Bitstream Vera fonts.

On the GNUstep side of things, the first one shows Terminal.app with horizontal menus. In the second, I was experimenting with using Tango icons in GNUstep applications.

I must disagree. First, I said commercially supported… as in the companies that owned the operating systems succeeded and had not failed. Both BeOS and NEXTSTEP were viable operating systems that performed well and were quite powerful. Unfortunately the people who owned them did not make good decisions. (One might argue that Jobs made a fine decision and that NEXTSTEP is alive today).

…just provides a NeXT-like approach to window management. To get the rest of it (the file manager, services, et al) you need to install GNUstep, which IIRC, actually uses WindowMaker as its window manager.

yeah, for 1993 it was downright science fiction. Look at what the competing desktops offered at the time. You may see NeXT as a blocky mess looking at it in 2009 and not having been a former user, but it still resembles a modern desktop. In 1993.

Think real hard about what Windows, X, OS/2, Amiga etc all offered in terms of user experience in 1993, and you’ll understand why NeXT represented such a revolution and why it is still beloved today.

My window manager of choice is Window Maker, has been for about 7 years. I turn practically everything off – there are no applets, icons or dock to be seen on my workspaces. I access my menu by pressing F12. That means I only see the application I’m using, which most of the time consist of iceweasel and xterms.

So far Window Maker is the only window manager that I’ve found that will allow me to setup my “desktop” the way I like it. I also like that it’s less mouse centric.

So far Window Maker is the only window manager that I’ve found that will allow me to setup my “desktop” the way I like it. I also like that it’s less mouse centric.

Not knocking it, but there are ton of ways to get just about exactly this, also in a small footprint. Its not bad, though I prefer some of the others, but there is nothing unique or even rare about it in terms of minimalism any more. I don’t much care for those square dock app icons, they usually show up on the top right of screenshots, and that’s how mine were when I used WM. Far rather access apps by right click, and also prefer a task bar at the bottom to handle multiple desktops to the way WM does it with that little applet which is usually shown at the top left. The task bar seems a lot simpler.

Nothing really against it, but general adoption at this point would be a hard sell. Flux is a lot simpler approach to a degree of minimalism. Of course part of the WM problem is that back then, this was not minimalism, and it wasn’t aiming for minimalism, it was quite fully featured. It just became minimalist as it didn’t evolve or permit evolution.

So far Window Maker is the only window manager that I’ve found that will allow me to setup my “desktop” the way I like it. I also like that it’s less mouse centric.

I’ve got nothing against WindowMaker, used to run it myself years ago, but a lot of WMs will let you do that. My Enlightenment desktop (E16, 8 years and counting…) has a workspace switcher and nothing else so I only see the application I’m using, which mostly consists of iceweasel and xterms.

I don’t have a menu bound to f12 (instead I use a keybinding to bring up a command launcher) but e16keyedit means I could if I wanted that.

I mention E because I run it, but you could do the same thing in twm, fvwm, afterstep, and any other WM you like. You may, in some cases, have to use a third party menu program and you may have to rely on xbindkeys directly for invocation, but you can do it.

I remember wmaker. It served me well over the years. It replaced afterstep for me back then. And I never looked back. Nowadays I do use a desktop environment (KDE), but I still have fond memories of this WM.

And guys, geez, it’s a window-manager. Not a desktop environment. It’s not at all trying to achieve the things a desktop env is trying to achieve. It just manages windows for X and gives you some menus so you don’t have to type as much.

But feels more modern than many other window managers for X, and especially “Windows”. Let me give some examples:

Window Maker supports different focus models, such as the comfortable “focus follows mouse”; “click to focus” and “focus means foreground” are available, too.

In order to move a window, you don’t need to click on its title bar. You can hold down Alt and click it anywhere you want, and then drag it.

In order to roll up a window, you simply double-click its title bar. Of course, I just need to point into that window and press the corresponding key for rolling it up (see keyboard support below).

Minimizing a window to a mini-window or just moving it off-screen (hiding) is easy, too – use the left button on the title bar or the corresponding key.

In “focus follows mouse” mode, you click a window’s title bar to bring it up to front (it has the focus already – focus and foreground / background are not related); press Alt and click it, the window goes back into background; I do this simply by pointing anywhere into the window and press the “Front” or “Undo” key.

If you want a window to stay be present on all workspaces, just double-click its title bar with the middle mouse button; again, this doesn’t imply that is has to be in the foreground.

Nearly every mouse function can be done via keyboard, too, such as switching the workspaces (virtual desktops). Everything is customizable easily though a comfortable configuration program.

Window Maker is the only window manager that fully supports the greatness of my Sun type 6 USB keyboard. Function keys can easily be associated with window manager functions, application starters or other activites. This is easily be done through a GUI setup program included in Window Maker. I mostly use them to run programs (like xterm) and to control window manager functions (roll up, hide, maximize, property menu etc.), while the volume keys on the right do what they are intended to. The big “Help” key locks the screen (xlock), and the “moon key” logs out, while Ctrl+Alt+Moon shuts the machine down.

Window Maker is fast. Speed-wise, KDE or Gnome or Xfce can’t be compared to it.

Allthough you may think it looks old-fashioned, it provides the “real speed” that you know only from the past. And because it’s quite “reduced to the maximum”, it can be considered to be very modern.

And, by the way, the look of Window Maker can easily be changed. Maybe the screenshots usually provided may lead a viewer to the conclusion that it looks like “last decade”, but it doesn’t neccessarily have to look like that. And in most settings I’ve seen it, it does look very modern (if you consider the window manager itself – programs it runs are a completely different matter).

Keep in mind that Window Maker is not a desktop environment, and it doesn’t claim to be. Still, there’s a GNUstep based project to achieve this goal. If I remember correctly, its name is “Etoile”. Window Maker is the preferred window manager of GNUstep, and Etoile uses it, providing a consistent desktop environment including various “native” applications.

I may emphasize: Window Maker is my preferred and nearly exclusively used window manager for almost 10 years now. I’ve tried many others, but not one of them could make me abandon Window Maker. For me, it can’t be beaten in performance, accessibility and support for productivity. A great tool. Even if from last decade – remember that you use good tools for a long time, and exchange bad tools very often. 🙂

I was going to score you up, but can’t. Thank you that was very informative, I realize now I do not know the difference between a window manager and a DE. I used windows all the way up to XP and then Linux and they all had DE.

Unless the GUI FOR Windows 3.1x was a windows manger, which I am thinking it was. I don’t remember if my Commodore 128 had a windows manager or not.

I was going to score you up, but can’t. Thank you that was very informative, I realize now I do not know the difference between a window manager and a DE. I used windows all the way up to XP and then Linux and they all had DE.

Desktop environments have early roots in UNIX, e. g. CDE in Solaris, or “IRIX interactive desktop”. The main difference to “Windows” is that UNIX and Linux keep DE and OS mostly separated (you don’t need the DE to run and operate the OS), but integrated (you control the OS via the DE). For example, you can run Linux without any GUI at all, with a window manager and different programs, or with a complete desktop environment with customization and integration (targetting the particular OS “under the hood”).

It’s arguable what makes a WM to become a full-featured DE. See the history of Xfce. It’s current version 4 is seen as a DE, while the previous version 3 (mimics CDE a lot) is often just called a WM. The question is: What functionality has to be provided that you can actually talk of a DE? A plain WM isn’t enough, that’s obvious. Programs, made to integrate with the WM, are needed, and they should cover common fields of use, such as a text editor, the usual desktop toys, a mail client, a web browser, ultimedia stuff… even an office productivity suite and a development tool (even for RAD) can be seen as a neccessary part of a DE. But as I said, that’s enough considerations for a long term debate.

Unless the GUI FOR Windows 3.1x was a windows manger, which I am thinking it was.

I think “Windows” *WAS* the the GUI, and if I should say if it was a desktop environment or not… I’m not sire. I have never used “Windows”, so I’m quite guessing…

Good article, nostalgia indeed. However, there are two things to make me wonder: Is it “still” progressive for being reminiscent of NeXT even given that NeXT used to be a “couple” of years ago by now, already, and given that there are technical successors to NeXT which are, well, “different”?

Adding to that: I wonder whether wmaker is still actively developed. Looking at the mercurial repository, the latest commits containing actual code seem to have happened 11 months ago…

I think it’s not seen recent development because it all works, and they’re not adding any new features! I first saw WM in 2001 and the only change I’ve noticed in newer versions has been anti-aliased fonts. But it all works, and in my experience it never crashes. Maybe it’s like the core system of LaTeX where it hasn’t evolved because it is mature to the point all the bugs have been worked out?

They have got some cool themes like “Leeter than you”, things which KDE and GNOME could have benefitted from copying.

But unfortunately, WMaker was a dead project for a long time, and I only used from 1998 to 2000. Development for a 1.0 release took an entire decade. And now, there has been some promise about bringing the window manager to a new level, not yet seen before.

WindowMaker was a great window manager in its day but I thought I was using it past its usefulness when I ditched it years ago. I loved the actual window management features and the lightweight interface but in this day and age a DE is desirable for most people and WM hasn’t had an update in years. It’s a dead project. This article might as well be its tombstone.

After reading this article i installed Archlinux with windowmaker and tint2. I am really amazed about how easy it works and especially about how low the footprint is. I am a linux user for i think 6 years or so, so i am not afraid to get my hands dirty in the commandline. But i can understand that this is not really a thing that new users would even bother to use.